Actually I (and most others) lie at each one of the questions. 1. Republican or Democrat? Dem. 2. Who did you vote for? Hillary. 3What age are you? 50-55. etc. etc. People like me lie to screw them up. Others lie so the pollster views you better ( I voted for Obama cause I ain’t no raciissss..). There can be no proof these asinine questionnaires are true unless there is a statistical difference of + or -56 points.
First, the precincts are scientifically chosen based on a large set of criteria. Second, the precincts chosen for an exit poll are not publicly disclosed for obvious reasons and third, the actual questions are conducted in person, face to face as the person leaves the precinct.
I highly doubt you have ever answered to an exit pollster since the odds of your precinct being chosen are small. There may be a handful that lie, but that doesn't matter. They expect some people to lie, but the vast, vast majority tell the truth, so statistically the liars are irrelevant. The precincts chosen for the exit poll can change from election to election, but most all stay the same. This allows the people behind the scenes to know their voters very well since there is a ton of demographic data by zip code. There are generally about 50 precincts chosen for each state, so a total of about 2,500 across the country.
The exit polls are amazingly accurate and as you have noticed have not been wrong at all during this elections season.
You can dream on about people lying to exit pollsters, but almost all tell the truth. The reason is most people are very proud to have voted coming out of the voting booth and are very hopeful about their chosen candidate regardless of the telephone polls in the news.
The last spectacular error in an exit poll was, of course, Florida, in 2000. That was 16 years ago and now, if the exit polls are close (they all share the same data and share the expense because it costs millions to exit poll), they don't jump the gun.
If the exit poll margin is 10 points, they will gather actual voting data and compare to their exit poll and generally will call in 30 mins or less. They are that good and accurate.